Valuable lessons
Sir: The Spectator deserves great credit for having so long trumpeted and encouraged the free schools agenda, which finally came to fruition this week. British education is a mess, and we are lucky to have, in Michael Gove, an Education Secretary determined to bring about radical change.
One might have doubts about the ‘free’ thinking — and, to me, The Spectator has at times seemed too eager to put its faith in the power of the market to fix all social ills. But to try is better than to fail. Free schools might not meet all the lofty ambitions placed upon them, but at least they will help loosen the stranglehold of self-serving teachers’ unions and quangos, who have taken away so much from our young.
Albert Waring
Birmingham
Sir: In your otherwise excellent Guide to Independent Schools (3 September), Ross Clark’s article on A levels and the International Baccalaureate contains some inaccuracies and misperceptions. He writes that ‘while the bac is good at promoting breadth… A levels are better at promoting depth’. This is not true: the three Higher Level subjects that students do for the IB are in many ways more challenging in content than their equivalent A2 subjects.
Furthermore, no modular examinations are offered in the IB, which means that exams taken at the end of the Upper Sixth require students to have learned and retained a deep knowledge of the subject. IB students then all have to write an Extended Essay of 4,000 words on a subject of their choice: our experience at Wellington College is that universities rate this very highly, because it provides students with the opportunity to do independent academic research which is not narrowly prescribed by a syllabus.
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